Part 7 - The Hottest Products to Sell on the
Internet
I believe the easiest things to sell and
generate quick profits are information products like ebooks, manuals, special
reports, courses and software. They have massive mark up potential and are easy
to deliver by email so there is no product or fulfilment cost
There are two easy ways to put a product
together;
1. Go to the library and get 5 to 10 books on your chosen subject. (To find
out what is in fashion, or people are interested in, go to any book store and
ask them to give you a list of the top 50 to 100 best selling non fiction
books). Read them and summarise the findings into your own words. You can then
sell this product as a special report or a book or manual. When I wrote my diet
book I was interested in losing weight and decided to look at all aspects of
diets, I read a least 30 books including all the best sellers, I also studied
information from such places as the Dunn Nutritional Centre at Cambridge
University, which is the worlds leading authority on obesity. So I knew my
research was top notch. I then rewrote my finding into my own words and my own
results. There are a number of web sites that can help you when looking for
ideas for products by telling what are the best selling topics or titles etc.
such as www.bookwire.com or www.bookflash.com or www.thebookseller.com
2. My second way of creating an information product is by using newsgroups.
This is the way I would suggest you use to start with, because it is faster and
you do not need to do so much research. You can create an entire book or manual
without really writing anything.
For example, if you were going to write about
a beginner's guide to fly fishing (something I know nothing about) you could
enter some post into a newsgroup like;
Subject Help?
Body:
Hello,
I would like to
get started in fly-fishing but I don't have any experience at all, could you
send any details or information or tips on how to succeed at fly-fishing.
Thanks, Joe
Bloggs.
When you have received back details and
information from people you can rewrite this into a product!
And what could your title of your product be,
How to Succeed at Fly-Fishing!
Or ask people for information on the best
places to go fly-fishing in Britain. There is another title for you. Can you
now see how easy this business can be? What you should do now is pick a subject
or market place and just start making a list of possible questions you could
ask about in a newsgroup. If you cannot think of subjects. Go down to W.H.
Smiths, buy a magazine related to your subject and just look for ideas. If
there is an article or report or advert selling something in that magazine then
the readers of that magazine will be interested in that subject. You can use
that subject to go into newsgroups and develop a product with the confidence
that you know people are interested in that subject and you will get sales.
One of the easiest ways to find products
ideas to make money from is just to visit newsgroups and spend some time
looking at what subjects are being discussed.
Once you have decided on a subject just go
into newsgroups related to that subject and ask question on that subject, as
for help, ask to get information, ask for advice you will get inundated with
information, which you can re-edit into a product.
You may think I cannot print the information
people send me from newsgroups, I need their permission. Newsgroups are public
forums and nothing is copyrighted, unless it is stated in the post. You can
publish anything that is said in the newsgroups completely legally! Are you
starting to see the potential of the size of the market? There are hundreds of
thousands of subjects out there.
If you are creative and just let your mind
go, you don't have to know anything, just ask creative questions, and you will
get hundreds of emails about your chosen subject that you can use to turn into
products.
The crazy thing is you will be selling
information products to the type of people who send you emails but haven't got
the foresight to turn this knowledge into a business.
If you think I cannot never ever write a book
or report, then you will have to pay a ghost-writer.
There are lots of people out there who love
to write, and will put together a product for you, for what may seem a small
amount of money. But once again these people can not see further than the end
of their nose, they are creative in one way but dumb when it comes to turning
their skill into money.
To find a ghost-writer, buy some writing
magazines or look in the exchange & mart or go into newsgroups about
writing where you will find plenty. Or see end of this manual.
It is said that everyone has at least one
book in them, many of you will have experience or interests in a subject that
can made into a good selling eBook. So make a list of your skills experience
and hobbies. Do you have a friend or work colleague who has a particular
knowledge of a subject that could made into an eBook. (I got my cousin who is a
mid wife to find material for me on one book I did).
More Product Ideas
One of the easiest ways of finding ideas of
products is to find a problem, and then create products based on solving the
problem. So you ask your questions in newsgroups based on the fact that you
have a problem. People will buy solutions to problems; they will not buy
features.
The net is the perfect place for niche
marketing. If you have a product about how make growing tomatoes easier, this
product may not sell in a retail store in sufficient numbers. ‘But on the net
however, it is easy to find hundreds of thousands of people all over the world
who are interested in gardening.
There are newsgroups, forums, discussion
groups, websites and email lists that deal
specifically with gardening..... A great customer base.
If you are a techie and are into software you
could create a tutorial for popular software, but write it in a very easy way
for people like me who don't even understand the idiots guide books. Etc!
The good news is.... Coming up with
profitable information products and eBooks can be easy. But a lot of people who
have tried direct marketing before have done it wrong and have lost money or
made very little.
You can avoid coming up with losmg projects
and products by following one simple rule;
Always define the market of people you want
to sell your product to before you define the product!!!!
Most people don't do this. Instead they
invest a lot of time and money coming up with a product first, and then ask the
question "Who can I sell this to?"
When you try to do this. Chances are good you
aren't going to make any money. Plus, you will waste a lot of time, and lose a
lot of momentum trying to find the answer to a question you shouldn't have to
ask.
The problem with the 'Who can I sell this
to?' approach is you give up control of who you will have as customers. And
when you give up that control, there is no guarantee the people who want your
can actually afford to do so.
You can avoid this problem completely and
retain absolute control over your project by defining the market (the people
you choose to sell to), first Having the freedom to choose who you want to sell
to, allows you to choose people who are most likely to buy the kind of products
you want to sell.
And in almost every case, you're having
control of this selection will determine if your project has any chance of
success.
Conversely, defining the product first,
without regard to who your customers might be, means you give up control of the
project before you even get off the ground.
Always, always, always define the market
first. Pick a market place of potential customers and let them tell you what
they want to buy.
Defining your Market
Defining your market is easy. Look for the
numbers first. It is no good working on newsgroups that only have a small
amount of visitors unless it is a special niche market that you have an
expensive item to sell them. Look for newsgroups that have a high traffic
numbers or use a good quality email list. Then look at Google to see how many
sites there are on the subject.
It is in your best interest to come up with
the ultimate product for the market place you have selected. If you do, you'll
get rich, probably quicker than can imagine.
But as most people in the mail order business
don't look at the market first, they find a product first; this makes less
money for them, and more money for those of us who do look at what the market
wants first.
When you go into newsgroups you will see
people asking questions. I looked at a newsgroup the other night on diabetes
(the sugar disease), straight away I saw at least 3 potential products.
If you wanted to you could come up with new
products every hour, by using the methods I am showing you here. Most of you
will not, because you are lazy.
When you have seen an idea for a product,
such as a report about diabetes, you can then put the product together. Then
advertise in the newsgroup and say, "Here's your chance to get the answers
you have been looking for!"
Having exactly what your market place wants
is a sure way to guaranteed success in this Internet mail order business. So
the best way to ensure your maximum success in this business is to spend time
in researching the market place, to find what people are looking for.
The key to this business is market driven,
not what you think you should sell.
The Key to Product Development- Find Out What
People Want to BUY!
The more you find out about what interests
the market, the more products you can come up with, and the more money you can
make. So obviously, finding out what people want to buy is important to your
success.
There are so many ways to find out what
people want; as I just said look at the questions being asked in newsgroups,
look for other products being sold, look for problems that people are having,
look for what people are already buying. This then takes you into the area of
using emailing lists. If you have a list of people who have bought or enquired
about diet products via the Internet, it doesn't take a genius to work out what
you can sell to them. Ask anyone who diets if they are always trying new diets.
Also people who have bought diet product will also buy reports on having great
skin, on buying clothes to suit their shape, on make-up techniques etc.
Here is an example for product idea; there is
million of software titles sold each year around the world. Such as Microsoft
publisher, a powerful desktop publishing programme. Yet many of the people who
bought this product have not had the time to learn how to use it. This creates
an excellent opportunity for those of you who are technically minded or are
programmers etc. To be able to get the product, read the manual and rewrite it
in a much easier way so people can understand it easier.
You can look in ezines to get ideas for
products. Get on as many email newsletters as you can, on as many subjects as
you can. Read Internet magazines. These are all ways to spot potential
products.
Research, research, research, leads to
success!
If you are doing your marketing by sending
sales letters via email, then in an ideal world you want to target lists of
proven buyers. People who have bought a related item via the Internet before.
These lists will be the most expensive, but they will bring in the best results
because they are proven buyers of the market place subject you are going to
sell. The best list you can ever use is that of your own customers. Of course
as you are just getting started you cannot do this. But in the months to come
when you have your own database of customers you will be able to go back to
them time and time again and sell them new products. To give you an idea of the
potential of this, recently I had an email shot of 20,000 sent out to past
customers of one product of mine about a new product I have. I had in less than
one week 2400 orders at £4.50 that is £10,800.
Investing your time in doing your home work,
doing your research into newsgroups, and finding good email lists as well as
developing products will be the key to how successful you are.
So what you do first is find newsgroups or Google
sections that have high volume of visitors each month.
Then make notes to what topics are being
talked about, advertised, discussed, asked questions about etc.
Make a list of potential eBook titles.
Then look for a product. You could either use
one that I may have already. Or find one from the list of suppliers in this
manual. Or write it your self, by getting most of the material for the book
from the newsgroups. Or get a writer to do the book for you. www.elance.com
HOT PRODUCTS
What you are looking for is a market place
that will be hot for the product you are going to put in front of them, if you
follow the rules I have just laid out you know in advance they are hot for it.
A great place to find the market place that
is selling well is www.clickbank.com/marketplace/
You will know these people are interested in
the subject you have, you will know that can buy it, because nearly all people
on the Internet have a credit or debit card. How successful you will be then is
down to the marketing.
Placing adverts is mostly down to testing.
Keep trying different adverts and headlines until you start getting a response
you are happy with. Don't expect miracles when you first start. I will help you
come up with ideas for ads and headlines. But as time goes on you will be able
to do it for your self. You can never know too much about this business. So I
would suggest that you get as many books as you can on direct marketing. Go to
your library, go to Amazon.com.
But one of the best ways to learn is look at
what other people are doing. If you see other people running ads week in week
out, then you know that they work. Keep a file on your computer of adverts and
sales letters. I have thousands of them. I will adapt ads, letters, and
headlines to fit what I am doing.
Developing the actual Product
There is an unlimited supply of products you
can offer to the unlimited markets you can find.
Once you have done your research and have
pretty good idea of what the customers want, you will be ready for product
creation. (By the way product creation comes before the writing of the sales
letter). But I would always test the potential response to your idea, by placing
some adverts in the newsgroups.
Product creation is the process of writing
down all the wants or hot buttons of your target market, and then trying to
come up with something that will hit as many of those buttons as possible.
You may decide to write your own product, or
ask me if I have one on the subject. Or go into the newsgroups to collect
information that your can reformat into a product. Or do a deal with a writer
to develop a product for you. Or search some of the places I have put in this
manual for a ready-made product.
Firstly, you have to consider all the hot
buttons that get the people in your market excited or answers the questions, or
solves the problems.
Of course different markets have different
Hot Buttons. And that's why knowing the market is so important before getting
the product.
The Ultimate Product will have these
Characteristics:
1. Be something the customer wants.
2. Be so unique that it is not available anywhere else.
3. Have a higher perceived value so that the pnce of the product can be
higher.
4. Have good quality content.
5. Have a money back offer.
6. HaveaUSP.
How to choose a powerful product that could
make you big profits!
Deciding upon an information product is quite
straight forward, all you need to do is be sensible and use the information
contained in this manual. The golden rule here is to always treat the world as
it is, not how you think it should be. Basically you have to give people what
they're looking for-pretty obvious really.
The following list represents the main
requirements your product should fulfil. The more of the categories that your
particular information product addresses, the more successful you are likely to
be. Your information product should basically provide a person with SOLUTIONS.
Such as;
More money. - Greater Freedom. - Better
Health. - A Better Lifestyle. - Financial Security. - Enjoyment. - More Leisure
Time. - Respect. - Greater Popularity. Business Advancement. - Better Looking.-
Better Skin. - Younger Looking. Getting the Ideal Partner- Improve
Relationships. -A Better Speaker. -Improved Memory. -Charisma. - Power. - More
Self Control. - Mental Illnesses. Self-Confidence. - Direction. - Goals. -
Purpose. - Happiness. - Marriage Help. Travel. - Pets. -Sex. - More Energy. - A
Better Career. - Knowledge.
I could go on and on with the list giving you
topics. But you need to look at newsgroups to find ideas for titles. Just look
for subjects that people are asking about in newsgroup.
I.e. if some ladies asked questions about
looking younger. You could put together a book called How to look years younger
in less than one month! For example.
THE SECRET PEOPLE ARE REALLY LOOKING FOR THAT
YOU CAN USE TO MAKE YOUR FORTUNE!
The list above is just some of the things
people look for on the net. However, all this can be simplified if you
basically keep the following three words in mind at all times:
HEALTH—WEALTH—HAPPINESS!
Those 3 words can become your key to wealth
By helping others get what they want, you cannot help but get what you want in
life - it's inevitable! If you want to make a lot of money with your net
business, the easiest way is to market a product that fulfils these needs.
These 3 words produce a very powerful emotive
effect on all of us. They are the three things which people are generally
looking for.
Ask yourself this one question:
WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT?
Answer that, and invariably you also answer
the needs of a mass market. We are all pretty much the same really; we're not
quite as different as we'd like to think. After all, deep down we all want to
be liked, loved, respected, be free, independent, admired, confident etc. These
are all the fundamental desires of a human being. So all you need to do is
fulfil those desires and you could propel your profits faster than you ever
thought possible. When you choose the information product it must contain the
secret I've just revealed, no matter how subtly. FULFIL BASIC HUMAN
DESIRES—EVOKE EMOTION!
HOW TO FIND AN INFORMATION PRODUCT THAT COULD
SEND YOUR BANK BALANCES SOARING!
The first step is to choose a subject
category. It could be one which you are interested in, but it's not really
important that you are interested in it. I have made money out of information
in which I hold zero interest- remember, all you are trying to do is bring
information to people that want to buy it. If you find a newsgroup about
breeding earthworms, for example, and you put together a product on how they
can do this-BINGO- YOU HAVE A MARKET PLACE! It doesn't matter if you have no
interest in earthworms.
Deciding on a product is simply a matter of
doing the same as those that have already
become millionaires in this business, and that's by....... WATCHING THE
TRENDS!!!
You can do this by surfing around the net
just observing all the different newsgroups, mailing lists, web sites etc. As
well as reading the papers, looking in magazines. THERE IS AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF
TOPICS! And you can make money from anything out there. The key is not so much
in the information product itself, but in pressing those emotional buttons in
your sales message. The only things you need to keep in mind are; the product
must have a target market And It must fulfil at least one of the emotive
desires I talked about!
Every time you switch on the TV, turn on the
radio, read a paper, pick up a magazine you are going to see all sorts of
opportunities to make money-when your mind is focused as such- it's just
amazing what you'll begin to notice. I promise you one thing; you'll never
watch the TV or read the paper quite the same way again.
By studying the trends, reading other peoples
adverts and just been aware of what's going on in the world, all will help you
in coming up with ideas when you are looking at subjects on the internet.
You can also use information products that
may be many years old. All you have to do is update them and may be change the
title I have found many old books and manuals that often the publisher is no
longer in business that I have updated or used part of the material. What I am
trying to get over to you that there is endless material for products if you look
hard enough.
One way to maximise your earnings is to
create a line of products. So when you have sold people one product, you can go
back to them in the future with other products related to the same topic or
field.
One thing you should do when looking through
papers and magazines is cut out and keep good advertising copy. The same goes
for when you are looking through the internet. Copy good ideas of marketing.
Create a file of headlines. Another for body copy. The more material you
collect the easier it will be for you in the future. I have boxes of newspapers
cuttings. Boxes of sales letters sent to me. And many files on my computer of
sales material from the net.
You can adapt any of the material you collect
to use in your own marketing. This of course doesn't really mean copying the
material word for word, but putting them into you own words or putting several
pieces together.
STACKING THE DECK IN YOUR FAVOUR
It is in your best interest to come up with
the ultimate product for the market you have selected. If you do, you'll get
rich. Probably quicker than you can imagine.
But since most people don't go to the trouble
of defining a market first, it becomes almost impossible to come up with just
the right product.
Instead of going to your market and saying,
"this is what I have for sale, do you want to buy it?" you should
strive to develop products that allow you to say, "Here's your chance to
get that product you've been looking all over for!"
Having products that your market wants to buy
is a sure way to achieve success in direct marketing. And that's why a direct
marketing PRO always spends time researching their selected market trying to
find out what will make his customers reach for their credit cards to place an
order.
Research, research, research leads to
success, success, success!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The more you find out about what interests
your market, the better your chances will be of coming up with a successful
product. So obviously, finding out what people want to buy is important to your
success.
A good way to start finding out what your
market wants is to look at what they are already buying. Looking at email lists
of recent buyers in your market place will give you information on what they
are buying at the moment.
Another easy source of product for you is
writers and publishers- thousands and thousands of news books, reports and
articles are created every year, and most go unpublished. And because most
writers want to see their work published, it can be quite easy for you do a
deal with them to get the resale rights or other contract with them. See other
details in this manual for places to contact writers.
Just a quick note about product pricing!
When trying to decide on a price for your
product, look to see what others may be charging for similar products. Then
either use the same price, or start lower and then keep moving the price up
until you start to see the order rate drop off. But never start too low, you
don't want people to think, it cannot be any good it's priced to low.
When it comes to product pricing, you should
know from your market research what price range your target market is
comfortable with, and you should try to price somewhere in that range.
Generally, most newcomers to this business
make the mistake of trying to compete by offering lower prices than by having a
unique high-quality product the customer wants. The truth is, you can't win in
the direct marketing business with low prices. You have got to have the
products people want.
When you put together a product that pushes
the hot buttons of your buyers and give them what they have been looking for,
you then can have real flexibility in what you can charge.
The important key is the 'perceived value of
the product to your customer' If your product delivers value, and is perceived
by your customer as being able to change his life, then it should be priced
accordingly.
When it comes to pricing products, you don't
want your customers to say, 'There must be something wrong with it. It's priced
to low.' When you price your product to low, you lose customer confidence and
you lose sales. Plus, pricing too low hurts your profits.
The way to insure you'll stay in business is
to sell quality products and charge what they are worth. |
